Managing Research in Services: Themes,Tips, Take-ways and Doggy-bags Ko de Ruyter Maastricht University The Netherlands

Gotta have a model: the Virtuous Circle Source: Community Intelligence Labs, 2002

How to interpret this circle? scan the journals for…  New ways of organizing boundary- spanning structures  Increased use of technology- mediated service delivery  New types of service encounters…  Unleashing creativity, that’s the real challenge

Unleashing creativity, that’s the real challenge (and you get to do cool research)  The power of technologies is fueling research opportunities  But…do not get carried away from theoretical anchor points  Remember, not every reviewer will know about service delivery in snow boarding virtual communities  Can anybody cite 20 papers on e-services published in the top journals this year?  Keep focused on the contribution!

Borrowing creatively from other disciplines  Services by definition is a multi- disciplinary field  There is a lot of stuff going on in neighbouring disciplines  Some of this can be adapted directly to fit your purpose, some needs a little bit of unleashing the creativity

Economies of scale and scope  Most journals are cutting back on the number of pp and my attention span as a reviewer is decreasing!  What is the contribution?  There is no room for wall-to-wall models  Yet, programmatic, nomological networks do have advantages (left-overs taste great the next day)  Manage research from a data-base perspective

A data-base…  Containes a large number of data fields  Combines different types of data (cross-sectional-longitudinal, customer-employee perceptions, subjective-objective data)  Lobby for the creation of a data-base of respondents at your school

Work with industry  A well-developed idea is easy to sell, just do not expect any money  Practitioners sometimes do have well-developed ideas as well!  You have access to a reality check, real respondents, technological support, internal databases and maybe more…

Work with (external) experts  Again, a well-developed idea is easy to sell, just expect to do a lot of the work in the initial stage…  Network at conferences, explore your supervisor’s network. Try to find somebody who is willing to collaborate (most famous service researches are friendly and approachable!)  If you can’t beat them, ask the econometricians to join you!

Here’s the bottom line …necessary for your career …necessary to engage in a dialogue with other academics …necessary for your teaching …necessary to improve your work …and probably the most frustrating aspect of early academic life! Getting published is:

Difficulties (that’s what they call opportunities)  Many different journals  Many different editorial practices  Arbitrary?!  “the big names secret handshake”  Nationality/university reputation  Coping with reviewers’ comments, they will raise the Contribution issue!

Publish-don’t perish strategy  Manage publications as a portfolio: A’s are the greatest, B’s are still great, but also realize that focused C’s are great reputation builders!  Writing is behavior…like other behavior, the more often you write, the better you’ll get at it!  Be alert for special issues  Scan a wider population than just marketing journals (OB, Psych, IS, Dec.Sciences, Operations)

Take-aways…  Use any chance to present your work  Select the journal before you start writing  The C-word: Contribution!  Ask others to read your article (“strategic” scholars)  Spend a lot of time on the referee report!  See it as a learning process…

…and doggy-bags  At a 3% acceptance rate, it pays to leave it for a little while  If you get rejected, put it in the fridge  Heat up the stuff, try another marketing journal  Try another journal in a totally different field (not at the same time, that’s a serious no-no)  Spice it up, with additional analyses  Try the same journal, after an editor change

Questions

Thank you for your attention!